DR. JAMESON AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
[To THE EDITOR OF TOE "SPECTATOR."]
Srn,—I notice your "deep regret that Dr. Jameson should have proposed to relax the laws restricting the sale of liquor to the natives" (Spectator, September 21st, p. 382). I remember having an interesting talk with Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who had startled me by proposing a brewing monopoly for the Cape Government, and the sale of good pure beer to the natives. His argument struck me as important. The native labour, he pointed out, comes almost wholly from Portuguese territory, where the State sells wine of an atrocious quality to its natives,—a blend of the grape and potato-spirit, regular "fire-water." Thus the native labourers have acquired such a craving for alcohol that its want is a chief condition of the unrest at Kimberley and the Rand. The workers save their wages, in place of spending them locally and for the general good, in order that they may return home quickly for a drunken orgie. Rhodes was of opinion that good beer was the antidote; that it would curb the restless desire to return home to drink vile compounds, would build up the native, would build up trade, and would build up the revenue.—I am,
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